Russian spies still seek to humiliate the West

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There is one wartime spy story that will never be made into a Hollywood movie for the simple reason that it is just too toe-curlingly embarrassing, an espionage blunder of spectacular proportions. Indeed, it makes Ryan Fogle, the wig-wearing alleged CIA spy arrested in Russia this week, look like James Bond.

On November 9, 1939, two MI6 officers, Major Richard Stevens and Captain Sigismund Payne Best, headed to a meeting at Venlo on the Dutch-German border in the expectation that they would shortly bring the war to a speedy and glorious conclusion. Months earlier they had secretly made contact with